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Growers should follow these six steps to identify nutrient deficiencies in plants and make appropriate management decisions.

Greenhouse growers in Michigan are busy wrapping up transplanting and shipping their product. In the flurry of the season, growers may overlook nutritional disorders in their crops. Most growers have trouble identifying nutrient deficiencies because many of the nutrient deficiencies create similar symptoms. So, how can you tell what nutrient is deficient?

Growers should eliminate that the symptoms are being caused by a biotic organism or from another environmental factor. For example, nutritional issues within the crop are rather consistent among plants and are not spotty within the crop.

Use the pour-thru or saturated media methods to test the pH and electrical conductivity (EC) of symptomatic plants. Are they within the normal range for that crop? Is your pH and EC meter calibrated correctly?

Growers should examine where on the plant the symptoms began or appear. Since some elements are mobile while others are immobile in the plant, the symptoms of the deficiency will be expressed in either the base of the plant on the oldest leaves, the top of the plant on the youngest growth or on whole plant.

Then, growers should use the plant nutrient deficiency key (see figure below) to help determine which nutrient is deficient. Growers can then use this key to come up with a hypothesis as to which element is causing the plant’s symptoms. It’s fairly common for there to be more than one nutrient deficiency, which makes this process more challenging.

While this deficiency key can provide growers with a starting point, we recommend growers submit a media sample for analysis of both macro- and micro-nutrients.

January 8, 2018 | Heidi Lindberg | The symptoms of nutrient deficiencies and toxicities are often confused with other issues. To learn more, attend a session for greenhouse and nursery growers in Grand Rapids on Jan. 24, 2018.

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